This game was made in a discontinued engine, I would simply just expect more content than more tech upgrades to the engine. It is probably much easier for them at this point with Stingray to just add more 3D content and missions.
The same engine (well, different build I assume w/ internal customizations and so on, but I digress) that was used for Warhammer 40K Darktide, which has very extensive DLSS support as well as beautiful ray tracing features. That was a showcase title for NVidia's partnerships showing off DLSS 3 though whereas Helldivers 2 is day-and-date with PS5. Would be a little strange for a Sony title to be like "hey, you should play this on PC and not PS5, at launch" but yeah. This is just a case of prioritizing resources here because Darktide shows it can be done, and then some, quite well.
EDIT: because some people seem confused, I am not implying that there is literally no additional work needed whatsoever. As I said above, it can be done and has proven to be done well with this engine, so it's not unreasonable to ask of the developers. At the same time, the developers are absolutely within their rights to prioritize other work and that's totally okay (great, even, since it's such a great game, even if I'd like to see DLSS)
True, but it's worth noting that the studio that made Darktide is also the studio that made the engine itself. They have the in-house expertise to work directly with it more effectively, they got support directly from NVIDIA to implement the DLSS tech, and Darktide had a higher budget overall. Darktide is built on a custom forked version of the engine that Fatshark has been working on and upgrading for years, so the changes to implement the DLSS are likely not easy to port over to the also customized version of the engine that Arrowhead uses.
Arrowhead definitely could have allocated the resources to implement the tech, but it likely could've taken more time and energy than it was worth. I don't think that DLSS and the fancy ray-tracing in Darktide is the only contributing factor, but the game has been facing a lot of criticism about the amount of content available. Arrowhead keeping the core of the engine lighter on the bells and whistles was very possibly the right call here.
I definitely agree there. Fatshark really put in the work on the visual side of that game and it shows. Amazing work there. I would not expect a smaller team that's making a smaller-budget game to prioritize things that aren't getting the game out to more and more people, and they've already shown that you don't need it to sell millions of copies.
Still would be nice though, and if they ever get around to it I would hope that it comes out without backing their other efforts up.
Bitsquid _was_ Fatshark, different company but the same people.
Bitsquid was founded by the Fatshark engineers and then the engine and company was sold to Autodesk to fund Vermintide.
No. Bitsquid was founded by former Grin engineers with some *investments* from Fatshark.
Grin was another Swedish studio responsible for games in the Ghost Recon franchise.
Fatshark was founded in 2007 and Bitsquid in 2009.
Grin was famous for its technical prowess while Fatshark have always released buggy trash, starting with *Krater*.
Look up Niklas Frykholm and Tobias Persson.
You know, I think you might be right. I knew that the two guys from Grin were the technical leads at Bitsquid, but I thought they were the two outsiders and that Fatshark had more than money at the company. Actually spending some time looking into it, I can't find anyone other than the CEO of Bitsquid that was from Fatshark. This would certainly explain a lot, it always baffled me how Fatshark had "made" their engine but also made insane mistakes like spending months after Vermintide II came out publishing all the intended patches to the wrong build of the game. The technical abilities didn't line up with what it seemed like they should be capable of.
From what I can find, Bitsquid supposedly had about seven employees early on and the only two that I can find names for are the two guys from Grin. It's still possible that at least *someone* from Fatshark was working on it in some capacity, but I can't find any evidence for that. It's surprisingly difficult to find *anything* about Bitsquid beyond the names of those two guys and, after some digging, that the CEO was from Fatshark. Maybe there's more information out there on Swedish sites I can't reasonably search?
Thanks for pointing this out, it's been an interesting deep dive!
The two Grin guys made yet another engine after Bitsquid got sold but it [suddenly vanished](https://www.pcgamer.com/alternative-game-engine-the-machinery-has-been-cancelled-with-devs-told-to-delete-all-trace-of-it/).
That is bizarre! I wonder if there was code reuse from a previous engine and they got in legal trouble? I don't know much of anything about them so I definitely don't want to imply that I think they would steal code, but I can't think of much else that would explain a situation like that. If the engine was bought or being included in some other product they wouldn't want to burn bridges and nuke the perception of their project from orbit like that, so it feels like someone made them take it down for some reason or another.
I mean self-plagiarism is a thing so probably they got an angry letter from the buyers of their old engine but no one really knows.
It's a very curious situation nonetheless.
I dunno if I’d call Darktides ray tracing “beautiful”. I’m a huge fan of ray tracing but I literally can’t see a single difference other than a much lower framerate in Darktide. Even took side by side screenshots and I can not see a difference.
I certainly would. I upgraded from a 2070-4070 and was blown away with how amazing darktide looks maxed out. Its one of my favorite looking games along side cyber punk and alan wake
Agreed. I'm not sure about launch since I only started playing recently, but there is definitely a noticeable difference with RT on now the game has been heavily patched. IMO it's not worth the performance hit though. Easily the most demanding game I've played on my PC.
Are you looking at in-mission screenshots/clips or at screenshots of the pre-mission hub? The pre-mission hub has baked-in raytracing lighting even with raytracing off (my technical terms might be wrong). That means the devs made the area with raytraced lighting, like they did in the missions, but since all the light sources are static in the hub, they were basically able to "save" what that looks like and display the similar outcome for raster. In missions, there are dynamically changing light sources (flashlights, weapon fire, explosions, moving lights from machines, etc) so the difference between raytracing and raster is more noticeable there, especially in motion (versus a static screenshot).
I'm assuming you've played the game though and have seen the maps in motion, so you might disagree about there being a noticable difference regardless. Which is fine. I haven't played a ton of heavily ray-traced games yet, so I might be underestimating how different the scenes can look compared to Darktide's implementation.
What you're describing is baked lighting, that technology has been around since the very early 00s, even if in different forms.
The achievement of Raytracing is doing that in real time, we've been able to do it slower than that for much longer.
Yeah, I’ve got ~40 hours played. Messed around with ray tracing in several different areas and came to the conclusion that there’s very little visual difference. It makes the darks a little darker, so basically adds more contrast, which I actually found to be a detriment because the game is already very dark and it can look too dark with RT on, to the point where it makes it difficult to see. That’s my experience, anyway. Other than darkening the image, I saw very little difference. I can already darken the image without RT and keep great performance if I want to.
I quickly googled a comparison which shows what I mean. https://youtu.be/BHzF4QYlxyo?si=ERGJQlft2sJb6oGW
Autodesk Stingray, formally known as Bitsquid. It's an engine designed by Fatshark and powers games such as War of the Roses, Vermintide/Darktide, and nearly every Arrowhead game.
Imo this would be an issue IF the game suffered from bad technical/optimization problems. But given how good the performance is, I’m inclined to agree.
Bring on the Illuminati!
I agree that dlss isn’t a priority. But the problem is the upscaler the game uses is pretty bad, it always looks like Vaseline.
Personally I either play native or supersampled. But I’m sympathetic to people forced to use the upscaler. It really is that bad
It took me too long to realize it can be slightly mitigated by increasing sharpness, but there's just so much...I don't know, artifacting? (I am the definition of a layman).
On planets with a lot of weather it can still look great but the second I get any kind of long-distance view the game just falls apart at the seams when using the upscaler.
Aliasing! Artifacting would be more like a deep fried jpg that's been saved and saved over again and is full of all sorts of wacky compression artifacts.
Or look on google images for "GPU Artifacting" if you wanna see some really neat stuff.
A better upscaler would essentially allow super sampling for 'free' still. You can DLSS something up and then DLDSR it back down and generally the quality is better than either either native or DLAA (DLSS run at the native resolution).
I wish every game had a native DLAA setting in the settings menu. They already implemented DLSS after all, so it'd literally just be adding one more preset to the initial resolution scaling. Some games, like most Capcom games with DLSS, let you mod the DLSS and implement DLAA really easily (some Capcom have started adding DLAA though, so that's nice). That's still a bunch of unnecessary steps that shouldn't be there though.
Hopefully there's gonna be a point where \[Render Scale\] gets revised when DLSS3/FSR3/XeSS ([or DirectSR, whenever Microsoft announces it](https://videocardz.com/newz/microsoft-to-present-directsr-super-resolution-at-gdc-2024)) gets added to Helldivers 2.
(btw: Render Scale should've been 0-200 Render Resolution Slider like most games does)
RTX 2070 8GB, 9th Gen i5, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD.
Depending on the planet, my framerate can dip super hard. Automatons on anything higher than Medium difficulty on a forest map and my PC starts struggling super hard. Honestly all of my friends are experiencing not super great fps.
I've had a couple of real frame-y games, not often but it does happen. If there's a lot of explosions and smoke/fog and hundreds of enemies it does happen. Rocking a 2080ti, I kinda want to try it on my wifes 980ti and see if it's a lag thing or a performance thing because it's quite rare maybe a handful of times over 100+ missions
I play on medium settings without AA on a 2060 and a 4900hs and I get regular drops to 25fps. I get that my system isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it shouldn’t be dropping that often.
My 3090 couldn't even get decent performance at minimum settings/native... The spacial upscaling they have looks like shit, it really needs dlss and some more work
You realize that most PCs are not cutting edge right?
DLSS has helped tons of gamers not upgrade their GPUs and still play games today. Its a boon to lower end PCs.
The game isn't THAT optimized.
I have a 4090 and 13900k at UW 1440p and during chaotic parts of the game with rain and fog the frames drop to like 70 easily with neither CPU nor GPU utilisation close to maxed out. It's still entirely playable but it's actually pretty poor optimization, all things considered
Seems like it can vary wildly between hardware setups that should seem relatively similar on paper. I'm on a Ryzen 7 3700X w/ a 3080 and I've yet to have any stutters or noticeable FPS drops in ~20ish hours with everything maxed @ 1440p
Idk i have the same problem with the perfomance, i have a 4070rtx i7-10700f and with low graphics settings and super quality upscaler, i barely peak at 60 fps, mostly 40-50 fps, but at least is playable
Are you playing at 4k or something? It seems like you should be getting much higher. Are you accidentally using super sampling? Do you only have 1 ram stick or have really slow ram? Your system should beat mine by quite a bit.
You could try forcing the game to run in dx11. It had a huge impact on my fps. In the launch options paste: --use-d3d11
I'm on a 12600k with 6650xt and with nearly all low settings, 1440p, ultra quality upscaler I was getting 65-80 fps while on the ship. When I changed to dx11 it when up to around 100. Turning vsync on w/ refresh rate set to 100 made it feel even smoother.
Yep, I've had friends that can't get good framerate in the *main menu* despite being able to run BG3 perfectly well on good settings ~~before the third act~~. I'm just outright not gonna try to see if it runs on my PC.
tbf bg3 can run on a potato. Friend bought it on my old pc i sold to him cheap played bg3 at max settings using a pny P1000 (4gb) gpu on an i7-7820x cpu (2017ish)
Some noticable little stuttering at 4080 Super also, doable. But not "buttery smooth" feels like. Perhaps, it's AC causing stutters or just the game isn't optimised
Update: Looks like the FPS limiter is the culprit by turning this off then use the frame limiter by your GPU's vendor software/driver and use 100fps (in my case). Play the numbers and compare which is better or much smoother
Buttery smooth now and I could tell the difference between my last 54hrs of gameplay versus my recent 1 mission, it is much better in my eyes. CPU temps also was lower, also the temperature.
Some guy with 7800x and a 4070 said he has lag, bit I only have a 5800x and a 3060, and everything is capped and nothing lags, I have 32gb ram tho, it seems to eat a lot of ram
5800X3D, night and day difference on other heavy CPU games (ex: The FINALS, BF2042)
Update: Looks like the FPS limiter is the culprit by turning this off then use the frame limiter by your GPU's vendor software/driver and use 100fps (in my case). Play the numbers and compare which is better or much smoother
Buttery smooth now and I could tell the difference between my last 54hrs of gameplay versus my recent 1 mission, it is much better in my eyes. CPU temps also was lower, also the temperature.
It's not as optimised as you think. Frankly looks like a PS4 game and that it should run on PS4 at those framerates with those graphics. And too much action or napalm on screen def tanks the framerate.
Anyway, gameplay is king and I agree with their priorities.
BTW this doesn't stop Sony from dedicating engineers to make it look nice. They did it for Calisto and that was a dud, and they thought this will be mid sales but its sucesfull. In their interest to polish.
I think the game does not run *that well*. I have a RTX2070 Super with a Ryzen 3600x, ok it's not top tier but still quite decent, and I had to take the resolution scaling one notch below "Native" to play it at 50-60 fps (I'm on a 1440p monitor). It makes the game blurier, which I got used to, but I would prefer if that wasn't the case.
I think it's reasonable to think I should play be able to play this game at 60 fps on a native scaling...
Well according to the article itself they’re not saying upscaling isn’t coming, just that they would rather focus on building out the core gameplay features first.
I should have clarified that the “good performance” is really just good in comparison to what we get in a lot of other games these days. Definitely room for improvement, but not so bad as to ruin the experience for most players without upscaling.
Agreed, the 2070 isn't that high up on the list, and 1440p gaming is already more intensive than at 1080p. Maybe he's spoiled by really optimized games like Doom 2016
With DLSS he could get more of that performance with his "low class GPU" for almost no quality losses, it's really not a mystery why people keep asking for DLSS. Not to mention DLAA/DLSS Quality would also improve anti aliasing which isn't great.
Current upscaling option is horrible, even FSR2 would be an upgrade.
Sure having DLSS and other modern upscaling will give a lift to all supporting cards. But this game doesn't have that.
OP should be adjusting accordingly, not trying to brute force it and then complaining about optimization when that doesn't work. Contrary to what OP claims, it is _not_ reasonable to say they should be running this game maxed out 60fps@1440p with their specs.
Yeah because games were WAY better optimized before DLSS... give me a break. I've been PC gaming for over 2 decades, PC gaming is in a way healthier place than it's ever been. I'd say DLSS is PURELY additive, the only game I've truly seen target it was Remnant 2, and I don't even believe they really did target it, I think they failed to optimize the game to where they wanted then said that was their intention all along. Also, DLSS does more than just performance.
DLSS looks better than running natively just because TAA looks like shit, running no AA looks like shit, and SMAA doesn't really work with modern rendering. DLSS adds performance and solves the AA problem, usually with some minor ghosting.
Beyond that, if the game has ray tracing, DLSS Ray Reconstruction is an unbelievable improvement over native RT.
I'm fully DLSS pilled, I use DLSS even in games where I get 200FPS, just because I find the qualitative improvements to be worth it. In games where I can't run native 4k at more than like 40FPS, it's an ever greater gift as I can go from 40FPS at 4k to 120FPS.
Ok, so would you rather games take longer and are more expensive as a result, or devs use a powerful tool and save a shitload of time, while players get to leverage more of their hardware?
Agreed. I have *never* seen the framerate drop below 90, running at max settings, native 1440p on my 3080+12700k.
I would care about upscaler implementation if the game didn't already run perfectly well natively.
Given that the game is built on Arrowhead's heavily developed fork of a deprecated engine, they probably have some extremely talented engineers on the team building this thing on their own. I don't doubt they could make it work.
But it would be so much work building that implementation from scratch for such a minimal change to the experience, that it is just an extremely low priority right now. Let them look at it later, when they have literally nothing else on their plate.
FSR1 vs FSR2 (or XESS/DLSS) difference in image quality is huge. Whatever else they have prioritized, I'm sure is the right decision, however I still would really wanna see these implemented at some point. More people being able to run your game is a good thing. Your game looking better is a good thing. The benefits of FSR2 can also be reaped on console. Wonder if one of Sony's support teams (Nixies?) could help them out. Small team afaik.
The most popular card on the Steam Hardware Survery is the rtx 3060, mid range and previous generations mid range is where most PC gamers are, any performance uplift helps there.
I'm running a laptop 3070, and I rely heavily on upscalers to either run games without risks of overheating, at 4k, or at higher fps. It's kind of a situation where I only ever get to choose one at a time (depending on what game I'm playing), and but without an adequate upscaler I don't really get to pick any one of the three. Helldivers 2 does somehow get huge fps dips, and I'm beginning to wonder if I need to free up more CPU resources or RAM or anything else like that.
They already have FSR, it's just an ancient version that looks like trash. Is it really so hard to put at least FSR 2 in this game? Tired of framerate dropping from 80 to 42 on my 3080 5900x system.
Yeah thats not due to your GPU, it's because of the physics, which is handled by the CPU. This game is very CPU intensive due to all the debree and gibs
DLSS is starting to feel like one of those things that people take offense to not being included.
Nvidia has told the gamers that its "easy" for developers to implement, so if developers don't implement it they must be lazy.
DLSS is one of those core features that helps to justify the expense of the video card, so if they don't put it in the game the developers must also hate Nvidia users.
It’s “easy” for a lot of engines. Unreal Engine it’s basically a checkbox. But for an antiquated engine like Autodesk Stingray, it may very well have taken enough time that they didn’t feel it was worth it.
And I put “easy” in quotes because while it’s easy to enable, that doesn’t take in to account the amount of time it takes to test and configure it all before shipping. Easy to enable, not necessarily easy to implement if that makes sense.
Edit: Mixed up the word enable and implement in a spot.
**Edit 2**: Some people seem very upset by what they are calling my "opinion" so let me expound on this with the reality to further show my perspective as some of what I believe probably is an opinion, but some of it is an objective fact as I am a casual hobbyist developer who has played around in most of the available big engines.
In Unreal Engine, presumably the most commonly used engine at this point, here are the steps to **enable** DLSS. Download the plugin from Nvidia's site, drag it into your plugins folder, Click Project Settings, Click Plugins, check the box that DLSS/DLAA (and if you want to add frame generation, check the box for that one as well), hit Save. That's it, it is now in your viewport editor. Nvidia isn't "lying" when they say they made it easy, because to **enable** DLSS, that is the workflow. Even the most clueless hobbyist developer can do this, as evidenced by the fact that I myself am a clueless hobbyist who has successfully done this.
However, you can argue that Nvidia is misleading people because enabling DLSS is not equal to **implementing** DLSS. Implementing DLSS requires a large round of testing if you want to ensure there are no issues. Depending on the scale of the company, this may be a very large undertaking, or it may be a blip on the radar of an already huge stack of QA processes taking place. Depending on what is discovered during QA, this can also add more project cycles to your devs to correct related issues, further increasing the resources required to implement DLSS.
Now, with Autodesk Stingray being a smaller, now antiquated engine, I'm sure it requires a bit more work to put in. Enabling it is likely not a check box like it is in Unreal Engine (but maybe it is, I know their VRED software has it built in as a plugin similar to Unreal). I know it is possible, because Darktide uses it and it also built on AutoDesk Stingray. But I have no idea what it required of them. I however would imagine that adding DLSS as a plugin is likely trivial for talented software designers, but non-native plugins are also going to be more likely to create weird issues, once again adding even more QA time than you'd likely see in Unreal.
So once again to summarize, DLSS is easy to enable for many developers nowadays because it is, quite literally, often times a checkbox. But implementing something is not just checking a box, it is adding an entirely new QA stack, and smaller companies especially simply can't always undertake that.
It is easy for developers to implement it, objectively. The problem is that the engine they're using doesn't exist anymore, so they have to bolt the functionality onto it if they want it to work
As someone whos implemented it in my own projects: its easy to implement, extremely easy. The issue here is that the engine they're using (autodesk stingray) doesn't have that functionality and is discontinued. But for Unreal and Unity games (99% of games) its piss easy
So long as they have source code access I wouldn't think it would be prohibitively difficult so long as they have motion vectors (used for motion blur and required for TAA). If they don't, then it isn't getting added full stop.
Also as others have said, Darktide also uses Stingray and has DLSS support. So it's definitely not impossible.
As a mere software technician, I can safely say feature implementation isn't easy even when it's built-in functionality that needs to be configured and tested - let alone implementing features that are non-native.
I deal with this with my HR team. They think everything is flipping a switch.
Fwiw both Nvidia and AMD have publicly stated it’s easy to add to games. Developers have also come out publicly and stated it took “hours” to add it into their games.
The limiting factor I’ve seen for the tech is if the engine has support for it yet. The engine that Helldivers 2 was built on has other games with DLSS so it should be feasible to add.
Specifically with Hell Divers 2 it is not an Unreal Engine game.
I forget the name of the engine but what they use is no longer supported by the developer of the engine (which the engine devs ceased supporting in like 2022).
So it's certainly not easy for them.
i've seen terrible DLSS implementations in UE5 games
also its not an unreal game
you have to still do a lot of work to make it look good as well, especially as soon as you enter customized territory that a game of this size/fidelity
If a single modder can implement it in a day in some games, I would say its relatively easy.
Unless the expertise of a single modder is better than that of a whole studio that has the game code itself... That would be a different matter entirely.
Because if some modder does it and looks like ass for half the people and causes ctd for others no one cares.
But if it's an official feature that is unacceptable.
Anyone familiar with development can tell you that the vast, vast majority of work is handling the stupid edge cases. I can rough out a script or function in an hour, and at the end of that hour it largely works. The happy path is done. But it may take a week or more to get it ready for prime time.
DLSS 2 games can get updates specifically to fix ghosting and shimmering from DLSS. it is not a free task, and takes time from developers to implement properly
considering there are far more important issues maybe focus on that instead
Idk, because fundamentally a modder doesnt have the same requirements as the developers do. Sure, a modder can implement it, but is it going to work on all systems? Is it going to cause any other issues? Is it going to impact performance? Etc. etc.
A modder can tell someone having an issue to uninstal lthe mod, but the developers cant really do the same thing.
Its like saying its reletively easy for a handyman to fix a leaking window, but the quality of the patch is far below building codes and contractors have to design a window with drip catches, flashing tape, flush cuts, siding, etc. etc. thats a lot different than the handyman squirting out some caulk and repainting the window trim.
It depends on the engine and depends on legacy code. The Starfield modder doing it in a day was funny because that shit already existed for Skyrim/Fallout games which used the same engine and it was easy to port.
It's not relatively easy though and that single modder even said that but go off King. Even more because the engine that Helldiver's 2 is running off is extremely old and no longer supported so it might take awhile. (Or not, that dev teams seems to be able to solve things real quick)
> so if developers don't implement it they must be lazy.
And if they do, it means they didn't bother optimizing the game, so they must be lazy.
You simply cannot win.
This is better than the alternative of doing no optimization and leaning on DLSS to get a playable experience. Let's just make sure we send the right message with any complaints. I'd rather have a well optimized game that gets FSR2 or DLSS late than have it be the replacement for optimization. Game runs well without it
Edit: I guess people want DLSS as a replacement for a well optimized game
If it takes a tenth of the time to implement DLSS than to 'properly optimize' a game and it comes out at the same performance, I'll take DLSS every time because that 90% time saved can go into more gameplay features.
Nothing exists in a vacuum, your 'raw optimization' isn't free.
Every time I play, I’m just blown away by the little things in the game that have been missing from AAA games for a long time. Things as simple as your character slowing down when running up hill, changing how the legs move to take taller steps. Things like being able to roll over from probe laying to sitting or sideways.
It makes me sad how backwards Battlefield went after Bad Company 2 did such a good job with destruction. It really made the franchise standout compared to COD before they started chasing LE EPIC MOVIE MOMENT SET PIECE DESTRUKSHUN XD
Inverse kinematics is in tons of games, it’s weird when games DON’T have it (Ghosts of Tsushima) but with that said, I agree with how smooth the Helldivers move and control. It’s up there with MGSV and TLOU2, these games should set the standard for how third person games look and control.
The game runs surprisingly well without the upscalers and in a way I’m glad it didn’t release with them. A lot of devs are using them nowadays as crutches in place of proper optimization. There’s some frame drops here and there but so much shit is going on in the game all at once that I’m pretty impressed at how smooth the frame rate stays.
I myself hope games have them, but for old PCs or for things like the Steamdeck as it's fine for helping less powerful devices, but yeah for everything else it is definitely being used as a crutch.
Arrowhead has ~100 employees, not ~100 devs. Given that the number covers everything from marketing to designers to QA, if I had to guess, probably around 30 devs.
probably not, Arrowhead has around 100 employees, so I heavily doubt it. Keep in mind that DLSS has been implemented in games by solo modders over the course of a week, so a studio of 100 should have more than enough resources for it.
I love Helldivers 2, but cant agree with that at all. They added so much "useless" tech that did not enhance the gameplay. Its a cool opinion, but they did not follow it.
>I only said "gameplay > cool tech"
This also makes no sense... a 3080 at 1440p cant hold 60fps in later modes (8/9 automaton), except you lower graphics settings which drastically changes the visual look in Helldivers 2 where the atmosphere is important.
Good gameplay requires good performance. This "cool tech" is mandatory render tech (+ FSR 2 and XeSS ) that all game should support, its in the same category as shadows/lighting/ambient occlusion or any optimizations (LoD,screen spaced...).
At what fps will gameplay probably feel the best? 30? 60? 120? or even higher? Higher framerate always makes the gameplay feel better, its like 2 gears that work together. Not everyone has a strong pc, FSR 2 would help out so many to get stable 60fps while still having a acceptable image quality.
DLSS offers a better and more stable image quality than their TAA(?) solution while also helping to achieve higher fps which means more responsive and fluent gameplay. This tech is part of optimization the same way LoD, cubemaps, screen spaced x, culling or reduced render quality (shadows/fog) are.
But the difference is, it can look better than native. A lot of optimization just means reduced quality, just as much that the user does not notice it.
Their upscaling solution is just shit, it looks horrible, why did they even add it? Every driver upscaler offers the same quality... you could ask this question for some many settings in this game (cool tech < gameplay?)
> They added so much "useless" tech that did not enhance the gameplay
yup, or point out how they've added MTX instead of more content, why is that? why not add in tech and content for release?
> This also makes no sense... a 3080 at 1440p cant hold 60fps in later modes (8/9 automaton), except you lower graphics settings which drastically changes the visual look in Helldivers 2 where the atmosphere is important.
I will very much doubt that statement ? Granted I have a 4070 but I've never dropped that low.
Did you play Automaton level 8/9 on that jungle planet + rain + thunder? This game can get quite gpu heavy with the amount of effect/fog/lighting it displays.
Here a example (5:00): https://youtu.be/16YYcO9l9aQ?t=300
The gpu is at 97% utilization (1440p, 46fps) which mean the yter is gpu bound, some here think this game is just heavy on the cpu and thats not true. Even at everything low that yter gets down to 75fps on just difficulty 4.
I wish they would reconsider. Once you have one temporal upscaler implemented, it makes it easier to put in FSR or DLSS. Obviously it's not 0 work, but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working. The problem with the upscaler they have is their anti aliasing is terrible. Even on ultra supersampling, there's shimmering on edges all over the place. I play on native resolution with AA on, and it drives me nuts. I don't like jaggies.
> but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working.
Then they'd have already done it. Devs *love* shit that's easy to do and provides a lot of value.
seriously... reddit armchair experts and thinking they solved something the people who actually do the shit for a living havnt thought of already, or that the people in question are apparently masochists and love not solving such "simple" problems, name a more iconic duo...
> but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working
I always love these clueless takes from gamers on how software development works, especially for deprecated engines
I’m an engineer. I still may be clueless, but again, they already have temporal scaling (FSR1) working. That’s the hard part. Once the engine supports one, it’s much easier to add others. The hooks are the hard part - the DLL you’re putting in there isn’t.
-edit- I’m an idiot. Fsr1 isn’t temporal, so they probably would need to do a shit load of work to get fsr2, dlss, etc implemented. Boo.
FSR 1 is not temporal... but youre kinda right... if TAA (temporal) is implemented its really not that hard. (1-2 weeks)
There are many modders and even indie developers that claim its easy if TAA is implemented, you dont have to be a dev to understand that.
I'd rather see new content added, if I had to choose. The game runs fine as it is. More scaling options in the future will be rad, but I understand why it's not top priority
Literally the only reason I can maintain 4k120fps is through DLSS (upscaler and/or frame gen). It’s glorious and there’s amazing tech behind it, I really don’t get the ”hate” against upscalers…. It’s fucking dope
DLSS is a game changer in performance at 1440p and above. Whatever they have implemented is god awful. My screen looks super smeared in vaseline sometimes. Performance seems fine after dialing back some settings so i'm more ok with it this time around but i'd love DLSS implementation.
I took the frame hit at 1440P and ran it at native. I get 80-90 instead of upscaling but i couldn't get my head around the way it looked with the upscaler on.
i'd like to see both. i'm only getting ~90 fps on low-medium settings, quality upscaler at 3440x1440p with a 3080 + 5800x3d
the game runs fine but for a fast paced shooter i'm forced to compromise visual clarity for frame rate. it's not necessary but better upscalers are available on a good amount of demanding titles
Idk chief. I'm getting 60-70 fps on ultra with 4070 mobile. Granted, it's from a laptop, but I shouldn't get 60-70 fps though. I was expecting at least 80-90
DLSS is not only performance lift but very good at AA, why people are pretending this game runs perfectly everywhere and we shouldn’t have the options for up scalers is ludicrous
when the people unable to play are like 2% of the pop according to steam hardware survey. even smaller when you consider playstation players are playing fine, no its not a large consideration when compared to content additions.
Lack of DLSS is slowly becoming a deal breaker for me. I do 1440p on an RTX 2070, and DLSS is the difference between 45 fps vs. 75 fps, or 70 vs 120. My card is going on 5 years old and the tech makes it possible to enjoy new games with a playable framerate.
Thought about picking up Helldivers 2 over the weekend. This news pushes me back into the "ehh wait and see" camp.
Lemme join you in that camp. Old RTX 2060s user here and im a little off about grabbing the game after reading all the performance issues in the comments, definitely have to wait for more time.
I agree, kinda wish the game had a third enemy type. How dope would it be if they discovered a resource rich dinosaur planet? I’m thinking dense foliage with lightning fast raptors, tanky and ferocious tyrannoids, threats lurking in the water, and flying mobs that force you to stay under cover.
The OG game has a third faction. It also has player tanks, mechs, bikes, and other madness. Give the devs some time to flesh HD2 out and I think you'll be happy
People saying performance heavy should look at their cpu, got a 3080 everything on Ultra and never got any dips in 90h of playing, also playing helldive since level 15 so u can say i’ve seen screen flooded of bugs and automatons shot and it’s definetly helping that i changed CPU last months. (7800x3D)
Running on ultrawide 3440x1440
If you have an Nvidia card you can use the Nvidia control panel to activate their proprietary upscaling/sharpening and anti-aliasing and then disable the in-game options.
I was able to get a much sharper image that way. It’s a little more aliased than native DLSS support would probably be, but it’s enough of an improvement that I can live with it.
My biggest problem with performance honestly comes from the CPU bottleneck which is an issue no matter how much you optimize the graphics settings. Turning down draw distance seems to be the only thing that helps but the game still can get down into the 30s or lower for me when there’s lots of enemies on the field.
what a loads of bullshit. dlss gives u a better image quality compared to taa(especially combined with DLDSR) and ofc more frames to play in a higher refresh rate! he talks about it as if its alot of work for the devs to implement.
Something that people don’t seem to be mentioning about their performance is what difficulty they are on, which has a direct effect on how well the game runs due to smaller maps/less patrols and less reinforcements when on lower difficulties.
4090 and 5800x3d and on some maps at hell dive difficulty with settings maxed at 4K, I’ve dropped below 60. This is the only game I’ve played on my system that comes close to this performance. There definitely needs to be some work done regardless of how much fun it is.
Yeah for real. I always ask my squad mates if they have drops as well when playing high difficulty and theres a llt on the map. And it's always the same for everyone.
So when I see someone claiming they get 120+ fps with the same specs as me, I always suspect they checked frames on ship or low difficulty.
Why not both? How hard can it be to add DLSS and FSR?
And even if that is too hard just add FSR2. It should be trivial and that's the one that everyone can use. sure it's not AS good as DLSS but still miles better than the FSR1 that the yare using
another day, another "article" made for a tweet by this CEO.
and like what is he even saying here? the game already uses FSR 1.0 and it's not hard to implement at least DLSS, Nvidia can do that for you. Darktide on the same old engine did it as well.
also why in their prio meetings did they prio MTX over "more awesome content"? why not prio more content and tech over MTX?
The performance isn't too bad considering how the game looks. But they really could have added FSR and DLSS if they are not going to put in better graphical controlls for the lower end hardware.
It is just sad because DLSS and FSR can be added to any game with at least mediocore results by applying some non adjusted, vanilla mods. But because of the anti cheat, this isn't possible.
I know the team has other priorities right now but adding DLSS wouldn't be a huge ammount of work. Not if just some basic DLSS is implemented, like in almost any game that isn''t AAA.
Because if you play at any resolution higher than 1080p, you need quite a modern rig.
Currently at 3440x1440 with a 2080Ti and medium settings at around 40 to 50fps. Acceptable but the game lookslike dogshit in comparison to other games because the crappy upscaler in this configuration.
This is a really dumb comment to make considering the game already has an upscaling system in place (it's just shit).
If there was DLSS you could get higher FPS, but instead we don't.
DLSS is an upscaler technology. It essentially allows a game to render at a lower resolution, and then it is upscaled to the appropriate resolution making it look fairly close to the display's native resolution. It's a really awesome technology and absolutely necessary for people running games at 1440p and 4K (especially 4k) depending on the GPU in use.
Helldivers 2 uses what seems to be FSR 1.0 or 2.0 (older upscaler tech). Regardless, it is HORRIBLE on anything below Ultra Quality. The image is very blurry. This is not an issue for me personally as I can run the game on Native, but I've been in the shoes of someone needing DLSS to have a good experience. The CEO's perspective here is a bad take imo.
I mean, sure, but I don't think the graphics programmers / engineers are the same people who are building content so I don't know why this would be a necessary tradeoff/choice.
This game was made in a discontinued engine, I would simply just expect more content than more tech upgrades to the engine. It is probably much easier for them at this point with Stingray to just add more 3D content and missions.
The same engine (well, different build I assume w/ internal customizations and so on, but I digress) that was used for Warhammer 40K Darktide, which has very extensive DLSS support as well as beautiful ray tracing features. That was a showcase title for NVidia's partnerships showing off DLSS 3 though whereas Helldivers 2 is day-and-date with PS5. Would be a little strange for a Sony title to be like "hey, you should play this on PC and not PS5, at launch" but yeah. This is just a case of prioritizing resources here because Darktide shows it can be done, and then some, quite well. EDIT: because some people seem confused, I am not implying that there is literally no additional work needed whatsoever. As I said above, it can be done and has proven to be done well with this engine, so it's not unreasonable to ask of the developers. At the same time, the developers are absolutely within their rights to prioritize other work and that's totally okay (great, even, since it's such a great game, even if I'd like to see DLSS)
True, but it's worth noting that the studio that made Darktide is also the studio that made the engine itself. They have the in-house expertise to work directly with it more effectively, they got support directly from NVIDIA to implement the DLSS tech, and Darktide had a higher budget overall. Darktide is built on a custom forked version of the engine that Fatshark has been working on and upgrading for years, so the changes to implement the DLSS are likely not easy to port over to the also customized version of the engine that Arrowhead uses. Arrowhead definitely could have allocated the resources to implement the tech, but it likely could've taken more time and energy than it was worth. I don't think that DLSS and the fancy ray-tracing in Darktide is the only contributing factor, but the game has been facing a lot of criticism about the amount of content available. Arrowhead keeping the core of the engine lighter on the bells and whistles was very possibly the right call here.
I definitely agree there. Fatshark really put in the work on the visual side of that game and it shows. Amazing work there. I would not expect a smaller team that's making a smaller-budget game to prioritize things that aren't getting the game out to more and more people, and they've already shown that you don't need it to sell millions of copies. Still would be nice though, and if they ever get around to it I would hope that it comes out without backing their other efforts up.
Fatshark did not make the engine that runs Helldivers 2 and Darktide lmao. If they did neither game would even release. Bitsquid made the engine.
Bitsquid _was_ Fatshark, different company but the same people. Bitsquid was founded by the Fatshark engineers and then the engine and company was sold to Autodesk to fund Vermintide.
No. Bitsquid was founded by former Grin engineers with some *investments* from Fatshark. Grin was another Swedish studio responsible for games in the Ghost Recon franchise. Fatshark was founded in 2007 and Bitsquid in 2009. Grin was famous for its technical prowess while Fatshark have always released buggy trash, starting with *Krater*. Look up Niklas Frykholm and Tobias Persson.
You know, I think you might be right. I knew that the two guys from Grin were the technical leads at Bitsquid, but I thought they were the two outsiders and that Fatshark had more than money at the company. Actually spending some time looking into it, I can't find anyone other than the CEO of Bitsquid that was from Fatshark. This would certainly explain a lot, it always baffled me how Fatshark had "made" their engine but also made insane mistakes like spending months after Vermintide II came out publishing all the intended patches to the wrong build of the game. The technical abilities didn't line up with what it seemed like they should be capable of. From what I can find, Bitsquid supposedly had about seven employees early on and the only two that I can find names for are the two guys from Grin. It's still possible that at least *someone* from Fatshark was working on it in some capacity, but I can't find any evidence for that. It's surprisingly difficult to find *anything* about Bitsquid beyond the names of those two guys and, after some digging, that the CEO was from Fatshark. Maybe there's more information out there on Swedish sites I can't reasonably search? Thanks for pointing this out, it's been an interesting deep dive!
The two Grin guys made yet another engine after Bitsquid got sold but it [suddenly vanished](https://www.pcgamer.com/alternative-game-engine-the-machinery-has-been-cancelled-with-devs-told-to-delete-all-trace-of-it/).
That is bizarre! I wonder if there was code reuse from a previous engine and they got in legal trouble? I don't know much of anything about them so I definitely don't want to imply that I think they would steal code, but I can't think of much else that would explain a situation like that. If the engine was bought or being included in some other product they wouldn't want to burn bridges and nuke the perception of their project from orbit like that, so it feels like someone made them take it down for some reason or another.
I mean self-plagiarism is a thing so probably they got an angry letter from the buyers of their old engine but no one really knows. It's a very curious situation nonetheless.
They’re not saying it can’t be done. They have better priorities.
I dunno if I’d call Darktides ray tracing “beautiful”. I’m a huge fan of ray tracing but I literally can’t see a single difference other than a much lower framerate in Darktide. Even took side by side screenshots and I can not see a difference.
I certainly would. I upgraded from a 2070-4070 and was blown away with how amazing darktide looks maxed out. Its one of my favorite looking games along side cyber punk and alan wake
They nailed the aesthetic
Agreed. I'm not sure about launch since I only started playing recently, but there is definitely a noticeable difference with RT on now the game has been heavily patched. IMO it's not worth the performance hit though. Easily the most demanding game I've played on my PC.
Are you looking at in-mission screenshots/clips or at screenshots of the pre-mission hub? The pre-mission hub has baked-in raytracing lighting even with raytracing off (my technical terms might be wrong). That means the devs made the area with raytraced lighting, like they did in the missions, but since all the light sources are static in the hub, they were basically able to "save" what that looks like and display the similar outcome for raster. In missions, there are dynamically changing light sources (flashlights, weapon fire, explosions, moving lights from machines, etc) so the difference between raytracing and raster is more noticeable there, especially in motion (versus a static screenshot). I'm assuming you've played the game though and have seen the maps in motion, so you might disagree about there being a noticable difference regardless. Which is fine. I haven't played a ton of heavily ray-traced games yet, so I might be underestimating how different the scenes can look compared to Darktide's implementation.
What you're describing is baked lighting, that technology has been around since the very early 00s, even if in different forms. The achievement of Raytracing is doing that in real time, we've been able to do it slower than that for much longer.
Yeah, I’ve got ~40 hours played. Messed around with ray tracing in several different areas and came to the conclusion that there’s very little visual difference. It makes the darks a little darker, so basically adds more contrast, which I actually found to be a detriment because the game is already very dark and it can look too dark with RT on, to the point where it makes it difficult to see. That’s my experience, anyway. Other than darkening the image, I saw very little difference. I can already darken the image without RT and keep great performance if I want to. I quickly googled a comparison which shows what I mean. https://youtu.be/BHzF4QYlxyo?si=ERGJQlft2sJb6oGW
I like WarHammer and WH: Darktide is a good game, but I personally like Helldivers 2 much much more,
Which engine exactly?
Autodesk Stingray, formally known as Bitsquid. It's an engine designed by Fatshark and powers games such as War of the Roses, Vermintide/Darktide, and nearly every Arrowhead game.
Imo this would be an issue IF the game suffered from bad technical/optimization problems. But given how good the performance is, I’m inclined to agree. Bring on the Illuminati!
I agree that dlss isn’t a priority. But the problem is the upscaler the game uses is pretty bad, it always looks like Vaseline. Personally I either play native or supersampled. But I’m sympathetic to people forced to use the upscaler. It really is that bad
It took me too long to realize it can be slightly mitigated by increasing sharpness, but there's just so much...I don't know, artifacting? (I am the definition of a layman). On planets with a lot of weather it can still look great but the second I get any kind of long-distance view the game just falls apart at the seams when using the upscaler.
Aliasing! Artifacting would be more like a deep fried jpg that's been saved and saved over again and is full of all sorts of wacky compression artifacts. Or look on google images for "GPU Artifacting" if you wanna see some really neat stuff.
There are some artefacts in Helldivers when stuff blow up too much close to the evacuation shuttle or with bile titans
I've noticed embers on burning terrain sometimes have really heavy artifacting, it's unfortunate. Just a line of little shiny squares.
A better upscaler would essentially allow super sampling for 'free' still. You can DLSS something up and then DLDSR it back down and generally the quality is better than either either native or DLAA (DLSS run at the native resolution).
I wish every game had a native DLAA setting in the settings menu. They already implemented DLSS after all, so it'd literally just be adding one more preset to the initial resolution scaling. Some games, like most Capcom games with DLSS, let you mod the DLSS and implement DLAA really easily (some Capcom have started adding DLAA though, so that's nice). That's still a bunch of unnecessary steps that shouldn't be there though.
I play supersampled and the AA off. Looks awful with the AA turned on.
Hopefully there's gonna be a point where \[Render Scale\] gets revised when DLSS3/FSR3/XeSS ([or DirectSR, whenever Microsoft announces it](https://videocardz.com/newz/microsoft-to-present-directsr-super-resolution-at-gdc-2024)) gets added to Helldivers 2. (btw: Render Scale should've been 0-200 Render Resolution Slider like most games does)
RTX 2070 8GB, 9th Gen i5, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD. Depending on the planet, my framerate can dip super hard. Automatons on anything higher than Medium difficulty on a forest map and my PC starts struggling super hard. Honestly all of my friends are experiencing not super great fps.
The performance really isnt that good in this game. Higher difficulties get fps drops frequently and the fps upscaling modes are unusable dogshit.
Maybe if you're trying to play on a steam deck.. Outside of actual crashes, I have seen exactly zero noticeable fps drops in 80 hours of play time.
I've had a couple of real frame-y games, not often but it does happen. If there's a lot of explosions and smoke/fog and hundreds of enemies it does happen. Rocking a 2080ti, I kinda want to try it on my wifes 980ti and see if it's a lag thing or a performance thing because it's quite rare maybe a handful of times over 100+ missions
I play on medium settings without AA on a 2060 and a 4900hs and I get regular drops to 25fps. I get that my system isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it shouldn’t be dropping that often.
My 3090 couldn't even get decent performance at minimum settings/native... The spacial upscaling they have looks like shit, it really needs dlss and some more work
Bro I sit at 100 fps on all high settings at 1440p with a 3080 so no idea what the hell you're doing.
Playing at 3440x1440, and refunded is what I did
? Playing at 3440x1440 on a 3080 I get 70-80ish fps with some drops to 60 when there's à lot going on. Native with medium/high settings (mostly high)
I play on PS5 at level 7-8 and ive only seen a couple dips in 80 hrs of gameplay
This entire thread is about PC gameplay. Atleast thats i was referring to
Same experience as the above playing almost exclusively at 9 on PC.
You realize that most PCs are not cutting edge right? DLSS has helped tons of gamers not upgrade their GPUs and still play games today. Its a boon to lower end PCs. The game isn't THAT optimized.
Yeah idk I'm doing great, what are your specs?
I have a 4090 and 13900k at UW 1440p and during chaotic parts of the game with rain and fog the frames drop to like 70 easily with neither CPU nor GPU utilisation close to maxed out. It's still entirely playable but it's actually pretty poor optimization, all things considered
I don't think PS5 performance is relevant in this discussion.
I must have missed the good optimization, then. This game runs like shit without a lot of settings turned down low AND the shitty upscaler is on.
Good performance? The game has horrible FPS drops during any bug breach.
Seems like it can vary wildly between hardware setups that should seem relatively similar on paper. I'm on a Ryzen 7 3700X w/ a 3080 and I've yet to have any stutters or noticeable FPS drops in ~20ish hours with everything maxed @ 1440p
Similar setup and also havnt had any stutters or noticeable drops in fps
Yeah, this game runs like shit on my PC. My PC isn't top of the line or anything, but I could get consistent decent frame rates in Baldur's Gate 3.
Idk i have the same problem with the perfomance, i have a 4070rtx i7-10700f and with low graphics settings and super quality upscaler, i barely peak at 60 fps, mostly 40-50 fps, but at least is playable
Are you playing at 4k or something? It seems like you should be getting much higher. Are you accidentally using super sampling? Do you only have 1 ram stick or have really slow ram? Your system should beat mine by quite a bit. You could try forcing the game to run in dx11. It had a huge impact on my fps. In the launch options paste: --use-d3d11 I'm on a 12600k with 6650xt and with nearly all low settings, 1440p, ultra quality upscaler I was getting 65-80 fps while on the ship. When I changed to dx11 it when up to around 100. Turning vsync on w/ refresh rate set to 100 made it feel even smoother.
Yep, I've had friends that can't get good framerate in the *main menu* despite being able to run BG3 perfectly well on good settings ~~before the third act~~. I'm just outright not gonna try to see if it runs on my PC.
tbf bg3 can run on a potato. Friend bought it on my old pc i sold to him cheap played bg3 at max settings using a pny P1000 (4gb) gpu on an i7-7820x cpu (2017ish)
Some noticable little stuttering at 4080 Super also, doable. But not "buttery smooth" feels like. Perhaps, it's AC causing stutters or just the game isn't optimised Update: Looks like the FPS limiter is the culprit by turning this off then use the frame limiter by your GPU's vendor software/driver and use 100fps (in my case). Play the numbers and compare which is better or much smoother Buttery smooth now and I could tell the difference between my last 54hrs of gameplay versus my recent 1 mission, it is much better in my eyes. CPU temps also was lower, also the temperature.
[удалено]
Cries in 6600K
Some guy with 7800x and a 4070 said he has lag, bit I only have a 5800x and a 3060, and everything is capped and nothing lags, I have 32gb ram tho, it seems to eat a lot of ram
What CPU?
5800X3D, night and day difference on other heavy CPU games (ex: The FINALS, BF2042) Update: Looks like the FPS limiter is the culprit by turning this off then use the frame limiter by your GPU's vendor software/driver and use 100fps (in my case). Play the numbers and compare which is better or much smoother Buttery smooth now and I could tell the difference between my last 54hrs of gameplay versus my recent 1 mission, it is much better in my eyes. CPU temps also was lower, also the temperature.
Ay, we have the exact same specs.
80+ fps on my 4070 super. Was getting drops in the 40s until I upgraded my cpu to a i7 13700k
Like frames actually dropping or just looks stuttery? I have a similar rig and get 4k 60 ultra everything with headroom to spare
Frames are really stable at around 120-140 in my optimised settings. It still looks stuttery, that's what I wondering why
Good performance? Are we talking about the same came? Maybe it's my AMD processor, but this game drops so often....
This game runs like shit, what? Bring on DLSS with DLSS 3 already, ignore this commentor
It's not as optimised as you think. Frankly looks like a PS4 game and that it should run on PS4 at those framerates with those graphics. And too much action or napalm on screen def tanks the framerate. Anyway, gameplay is king and I agree with their priorities. BTW this doesn't stop Sony from dedicating engineers to make it look nice. They did it for Calisto and that was a dud, and they thought this will be mid sales but its sucesfull. In their interest to polish.
I think the game does not run *that well*. I have a RTX2070 Super with a Ryzen 3600x, ok it's not top tier but still quite decent, and I had to take the resolution scaling one notch below "Native" to play it at 50-60 fps (I'm on a 1440p monitor). It makes the game blurier, which I got used to, but I would prefer if that wasn't the case. I think it's reasonable to think I should play be able to play this game at 60 fps on a native scaling...
The 2070 Super is a tier below the 3070 which is what is recommended for playing at 1440p 60fps - https://imgur.com/a/BqUZy9D
Well according to the article itself they’re not saying upscaling isn’t coming, just that they would rather focus on building out the core gameplay features first. I should have clarified that the “good performance” is really just good in comparison to what we get in a lot of other games these days. Definitely room for improvement, but not so bad as to ruin the experience for most players without upscaling.
You are using a low class GPU and surprised that you have to game at 1080p for a brand new game?
Agreed, the 2070 isn't that high up on the list, and 1440p gaming is already more intensive than at 1080p. Maybe he's spoiled by really optimized games like Doom 2016
Doom 2016 is 8 years old now, jfc.
2070 Super tbf, but that's still a 2019 card, playing at 1080p seems reasonable to me
With DLSS he could get more of that performance with his "low class GPU" for almost no quality losses, it's really not a mystery why people keep asking for DLSS. Not to mention DLAA/DLSS Quality would also improve anti aliasing which isn't great. Current upscaling option is horrible, even FSR2 would be an upgrade.
Sure having DLSS and other modern upscaling will give a lift to all supporting cards. But this game doesn't have that. OP should be adjusting accordingly, not trying to brute force it and then complaining about optimization when that doesn't work. Contrary to what OP claims, it is _not_ reasonable to say they should be running this game maxed out 60fps@1440p with their specs.
i think it's quite optimized for the detail on offer, and the pc port is at least as good as PS5 which has similar power to your pc
I hate that FSR and DLSS are a standard these days. It's a crutch for shitty optimization and bad practices with the modeling/texturing.
Yeah because games were WAY better optimized before DLSS... give me a break. I've been PC gaming for over 2 decades, PC gaming is in a way healthier place than it's ever been. I'd say DLSS is PURELY additive, the only game I've truly seen target it was Remnant 2, and I don't even believe they really did target it, I think they failed to optimize the game to where they wanted then said that was their intention all along. Also, DLSS does more than just performance. DLSS looks better than running natively just because TAA looks like shit, running no AA looks like shit, and SMAA doesn't really work with modern rendering. DLSS adds performance and solves the AA problem, usually with some minor ghosting. Beyond that, if the game has ray tracing, DLSS Ray Reconstruction is an unbelievable improvement over native RT. I'm fully DLSS pilled, I use DLSS even in games where I get 200FPS, just because I find the qualitative improvements to be worth it. In games where I can't run native 4k at more than like 40FPS, it's an ever greater gift as I can go from 40FPS at 4k to 120FPS.
Ok, so would you rather games take longer and are more expensive as a result, or devs use a powerful tool and save a shitload of time, while players get to leverage more of their hardware?
Agreed. I have *never* seen the framerate drop below 90, running at max settings, native 1440p on my 3080+12700k. I would care about upscaler implementation if the game didn't already run perfectly well natively. Given that the game is built on Arrowhead's heavily developed fork of a deprecated engine, they probably have some extremely talented engineers on the team building this thing on their own. I don't doubt they could make it work. But it would be so much work building that implementation from scratch for such a minimal change to the experience, that it is just an extremely low priority right now. Let them look at it later, when they have literally nothing else on their plate.
FSR1 vs FSR2 (or XESS/DLSS) difference in image quality is huge. Whatever else they have prioritized, I'm sure is the right decision, however I still would really wanna see these implemented at some point. More people being able to run your game is a good thing. Your game looking better is a good thing. The benefits of FSR2 can also be reaped on console. Wonder if one of Sony's support teams (Nixies?) could help them out. Small team afaik.
Are people not able to run this game at native resolution with good performance?
The most popular card on the Steam Hardware Survery is the rtx 3060, mid range and previous generations mid range is where most PC gamers are, any performance uplift helps there.
I went from a 970 to a 3060 I am the main steam demographic lol
Not everyone.
I'm running a laptop 3070, and I rely heavily on upscalers to either run games without risks of overheating, at 4k, or at higher fps. It's kind of a situation where I only ever get to choose one at a time (depending on what game I'm playing), and but without an adequate upscaler I don't really get to pick any one of the three. Helldivers 2 does somehow get huge fps dips, and I'm beginning to wonder if I need to free up more CPU resources or RAM or anything else like that.
They already have FSR, it's just an ancient version that looks like trash. Is it really so hard to put at least FSR 2 in this game? Tired of framerate dropping from 80 to 42 on my 3080 5900x system.
Yeah thats not due to your GPU, it's because of the physics, which is handled by the CPU. This game is very CPU intensive due to all the debree and gibs
DLSS is starting to feel like one of those things that people take offense to not being included. Nvidia has told the gamers that its "easy" for developers to implement, so if developers don't implement it they must be lazy. DLSS is one of those core features that helps to justify the expense of the video card, so if they don't put it in the game the developers must also hate Nvidia users.
It’s “easy” for a lot of engines. Unreal Engine it’s basically a checkbox. But for an antiquated engine like Autodesk Stingray, it may very well have taken enough time that they didn’t feel it was worth it. And I put “easy” in quotes because while it’s easy to enable, that doesn’t take in to account the amount of time it takes to test and configure it all before shipping. Easy to enable, not necessarily easy to implement if that makes sense. Edit: Mixed up the word enable and implement in a spot. **Edit 2**: Some people seem very upset by what they are calling my "opinion" so let me expound on this with the reality to further show my perspective as some of what I believe probably is an opinion, but some of it is an objective fact as I am a casual hobbyist developer who has played around in most of the available big engines. In Unreal Engine, presumably the most commonly used engine at this point, here are the steps to **enable** DLSS. Download the plugin from Nvidia's site, drag it into your plugins folder, Click Project Settings, Click Plugins, check the box that DLSS/DLAA (and if you want to add frame generation, check the box for that one as well), hit Save. That's it, it is now in your viewport editor. Nvidia isn't "lying" when they say they made it easy, because to **enable** DLSS, that is the workflow. Even the most clueless hobbyist developer can do this, as evidenced by the fact that I myself am a clueless hobbyist who has successfully done this. However, you can argue that Nvidia is misleading people because enabling DLSS is not equal to **implementing** DLSS. Implementing DLSS requires a large round of testing if you want to ensure there are no issues. Depending on the scale of the company, this may be a very large undertaking, or it may be a blip on the radar of an already huge stack of QA processes taking place. Depending on what is discovered during QA, this can also add more project cycles to your devs to correct related issues, further increasing the resources required to implement DLSS. Now, with Autodesk Stingray being a smaller, now antiquated engine, I'm sure it requires a bit more work to put in. Enabling it is likely not a check box like it is in Unreal Engine (but maybe it is, I know their VRED software has it built in as a plugin similar to Unreal). I know it is possible, because Darktide uses it and it also built on AutoDesk Stingray. But I have no idea what it required of them. I however would imagine that adding DLSS as a plugin is likely trivial for talented software designers, but non-native plugins are also going to be more likely to create weird issues, once again adding even more QA time than you'd likely see in Unreal. So once again to summarize, DLSS is easy to enable for many developers nowadays because it is, quite literally, often times a checkbox. But implementing something is not just checking a box, it is adding an entirely new QA stack, and smaller companies especially simply can't always undertake that.
>Lazy I can't take this word seriously in regard to game development anymore unfortunately.
It is easy for developers to implement it, objectively. The problem is that the engine they're using doesn't exist anymore, so they have to bolt the functionality onto it if they want it to work
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As someone whos implemented it in my own projects: its easy to implement, extremely easy. The issue here is that the engine they're using (autodesk stingray) doesn't have that functionality and is discontinued. But for Unreal and Unity games (99% of games) its piss easy
So long as they have source code access I wouldn't think it would be prohibitively difficult so long as they have motion vectors (used for motion blur and required for TAA). If they don't, then it isn't getting added full stop. Also as others have said, Darktide also uses Stingray and has DLSS support. So it's definitely not impossible.
As a mere software technician, I can safely say feature implementation isn't easy even when it's built-in functionality that needs to be configured and tested - let alone implementing features that are non-native. I deal with this with my HR team. They think everything is flipping a switch.
Fwiw both Nvidia and AMD have publicly stated it’s easy to add to games. Developers have also come out publicly and stated it took “hours” to add it into their games. The limiting factor I’ve seen for the tech is if the engine has support for it yet. The engine that Helldivers 2 was built on has other games with DLSS so it should be feasible to add.
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Its autodesk stingray which has been discontinued for a few years now. (6? years)
Specifically with Hell Divers 2 it is not an Unreal Engine game. I forget the name of the engine but what they use is no longer supported by the developer of the engine (which the engine devs ceased supporting in like 2022). So it's certainly not easy for them.
>I forget the name of the engine Autodesk Stingray
It’s not unreal.
i've seen terrible DLSS implementations in UE5 games also its not an unreal game you have to still do a lot of work to make it look good as well, especially as soon as you enter customized territory that a game of this size/fidelity
If a single modder can implement it in a day in some games, I would say its relatively easy. Unless the expertise of a single modder is better than that of a whole studio that has the game code itself... That would be a different matter entirely.
Because if some modder does it and looks like ass for half the people and causes ctd for others no one cares. But if it's an official feature that is unacceptable. Anyone familiar with development can tell you that the vast, vast majority of work is handling the stupid edge cases. I can rough out a script or function in an hour, and at the end of that hour it largely works. The happy path is done. But it may take a week or more to get it ready for prime time.
DLSS 2 games can get updates specifically to fix ghosting and shimmering from DLSS. it is not a free task, and takes time from developers to implement properly considering there are far more important issues maybe focus on that instead
Idk, because fundamentally a modder doesnt have the same requirements as the developers do. Sure, a modder can implement it, but is it going to work on all systems? Is it going to cause any other issues? Is it going to impact performance? Etc. etc. A modder can tell someone having an issue to uninstal lthe mod, but the developers cant really do the same thing. Its like saying its reletively easy for a handyman to fix a leaking window, but the quality of the patch is far below building codes and contractors have to design a window with drip catches, flashing tape, flush cuts, siding, etc. etc. thats a lot different than the handyman squirting out some caulk and repainting the window trim.
Thank you, so tired of this "BUT MODDERS" disingenuous nonsense
It depends on the engine and depends on legacy code. The Starfield modder doing it in a day was funny because that shit already existed for Skyrim/Fallout games which used the same engine and it was easy to port. It's not relatively easy though and that single modder even said that but go off King. Even more because the engine that Helldiver's 2 is running off is extremely old and no longer supported so it might take awhile. (Or not, that dev teams seems to be able to solve things real quick)
Kick rocks too perhaps?
> so if developers don't implement it they must be lazy. And if they do, it means they didn't bother optimizing the game, so they must be lazy. You simply cannot win.
This is better than the alternative of doing no optimization and leaning on DLSS to get a playable experience. Let's just make sure we send the right message with any complaints. I'd rather have a well optimized game that gets FSR2 or DLSS late than have it be the replacement for optimization. Game runs well without it Edit: I guess people want DLSS as a replacement for a well optimized game
If it takes a tenth of the time to implement DLSS than to 'properly optimize' a game and it comes out at the same performance, I'll take DLSS every time because that 90% time saved can go into more gameplay features. Nothing exists in a vacuum, your 'raw optimization' isn't free.
Every time I play, I’m just blown away by the little things in the game that have been missing from AAA games for a long time. Things as simple as your character slowing down when running up hill, changing how the legs move to take taller steps. Things like being able to roll over from probe laying to sitting or sideways.
Let's not forget leaving craters in the ground when you blow shit up!
It makes me sad how backwards Battlefield went after Bad Company 2 did such a good job with destruction. It really made the franchise standout compared to COD before they started chasing LE EPIC MOVIE MOMENT SET PIECE DESTRUKSHUN XD
Inverse kinematics is in tons of games, it’s weird when games DON’T have it (Ghosts of Tsushima) but with that said, I agree with how smooth the Helldivers move and control. It’s up there with MGSV and TLOU2, these games should set the standard for how third person games look and control.
All these things have been a part of AAAs for quite some time, dynamic animations is nothing new
The prone animations are rarely in other games.
How do you roll over while prone? I couldn't figure it out. But I was probably surrounded by robots at the time....
You just turn the camera like you would standing, the character just rolls around just like a person holding a gun really would.
Oh I thought you could roll around like in MGS5
Ahh, nope. Just gets rid of the COD animation where you just always happen to be laying on a lazy Susan so you can pivot your prone body on the spot.
iirc The first game to create a dynamic humanoid walk cycle over sloped and uneven terrain was Dragon Age Origins.
Inverse kinematics has been around since the N64 at least
The game runs surprisingly well without the upscalers and in a way I’m glad it didn’t release with them. A lot of devs are using them nowadays as crutches in place of proper optimization. There’s some frame drops here and there but so much shit is going on in the game all at once that I’m pretty impressed at how smooth the frame rate stays.
It does have upscalers though
And it's turned on by default and looks pretty bad in comparison to DLSS or even FSR
It's because it's FSR 1.0
I appreciate running well without it. But starting at 1440p DLSS looks better than most anti aliasing methods. While also improving performance.
I myself hope games have them, but for old PCs or for things like the Steamdeck as it's fine for helping less powerful devices, but yeah for everything else it is definitely being used as a crutch.
FSR has been a godsend on the deck. Once they got FSR2 added to BG3, the game became significantly more enjoyable.
Fair point. Are the engineers optimising things like DLSS the same type of engineers who would be working on content?
in a small dev team? 100%
Dev team of ~100.
Arrowhead has ~100 employees, not ~100 devs. Given that the number covers everything from marketing to designers to QA, if I had to guess, probably around 30 devs.
probably not, Arrowhead has around 100 employees, so I heavily doubt it. Keep in mind that DLSS has been implemented in games by solo modders over the course of a week, so a studio of 100 should have more than enough resources for it.
Depends on the engine. Not guaranteed to be easy.
Even when we call in like 700 air strikes at once the game runs fine. I’ve had ~2 noticeable frame dips in my 40 hours playing More content please
On my 7800XT I had to turn off a few setting or the game insta crashes on launch every time. I just hope they fix that.
Do you have the [24.2.1](https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-24-2-1-helldivers-2) driver? Fixed my crash issues.
> Do you have the 24.2.1 driver? Fixed my crash issues. Is this the one after 23.40.19.01? This one completely fixed my crashes.
I love Helldivers 2, but cant agree with that at all. They added so much "useless" tech that did not enhance the gameplay. Its a cool opinion, but they did not follow it. >I only said "gameplay > cool tech" This also makes no sense... a 3080 at 1440p cant hold 60fps in later modes (8/9 automaton), except you lower graphics settings which drastically changes the visual look in Helldivers 2 where the atmosphere is important. Good gameplay requires good performance. This "cool tech" is mandatory render tech (+ FSR 2 and XeSS ) that all game should support, its in the same category as shadows/lighting/ambient occlusion or any optimizations (LoD,screen spaced...). At what fps will gameplay probably feel the best? 30? 60? 120? or even higher? Higher framerate always makes the gameplay feel better, its like 2 gears that work together. Not everyone has a strong pc, FSR 2 would help out so many to get stable 60fps while still having a acceptable image quality. DLSS offers a better and more stable image quality than their TAA(?) solution while also helping to achieve higher fps which means more responsive and fluent gameplay. This tech is part of optimization the same way LoD, cubemaps, screen spaced x, culling or reduced render quality (shadows/fog) are. But the difference is, it can look better than native. A lot of optimization just means reduced quality, just as much that the user does not notice it. Their upscaling solution is just shit, it looks horrible, why did they even add it? Every driver upscaler offers the same quality... you could ask this question for some many settings in this game (cool tech < gameplay?)
> They added so much "useless" tech that did not enhance the gameplay yup, or point out how they've added MTX instead of more content, why is that? why not add in tech and content for release?
> This also makes no sense... a 3080 at 1440p cant hold 60fps in later modes (8/9 automaton), except you lower graphics settings which drastically changes the visual look in Helldivers 2 where the atmosphere is important. I will very much doubt that statement ? Granted I have a 4070 but I've never dropped that low.
Did you play Automaton level 8/9 on that jungle planet + rain + thunder? This game can get quite gpu heavy with the amount of effect/fog/lighting it displays. Here a example (5:00): https://youtu.be/16YYcO9l9aQ?t=300 The gpu is at 97% utilization (1440p, 46fps) which mean the yter is gpu bound, some here think this game is just heavy on the cpu and thats not true. Even at everything low that yter gets down to 75fps on just difficulty 4.
I wish they would reconsider. Once you have one temporal upscaler implemented, it makes it easier to put in FSR or DLSS. Obviously it's not 0 work, but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working. The problem with the upscaler they have is their anti aliasing is terrible. Even on ultra supersampling, there's shimmering on edges all over the place. I play on native resolution with AA on, and it drives me nuts. I don't like jaggies.
> but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working. Then they'd have already done it. Devs *love* shit that's easy to do and provides a lot of value.
seriously... reddit armchair experts and thinking they solved something the people who actually do the shit for a living havnt thought of already, or that the people in question are apparently masochists and love not solving such "simple" problems, name a more iconic duo...
> but an engineer and a few days should be able to have it working I always love these clueless takes from gamers on how software development works, especially for deprecated engines
I’m an engineer. I still may be clueless, but again, they already have temporal scaling (FSR1) working. That’s the hard part. Once the engine supports one, it’s much easier to add others. The hooks are the hard part - the DLL you’re putting in there isn’t. -edit- I’m an idiot. Fsr1 isn’t temporal, so they probably would need to do a shit load of work to get fsr2, dlss, etc implemented. Boo.
FSR 1 is not temporal... but youre kinda right... if TAA (temporal) is implemented its really not that hard. (1-2 weeks) There are many modders and even indie developers that claim its easy if TAA is implemented, you dont have to be a dev to understand that.
I'd rather see new content added, if I had to choose. The game runs fine as it is. More scaling options in the future will be rad, but I understand why it's not top priority
Why is it necessary to begin with? The game looks good already and plays well for the most part. I'll take more awesome content over DLSS any day.
Making games run better on more hardware is ALWAYS a good thing
Outputting at 1080p is almost trivial nowadays but 1440p/4K output still requires some effort and DLSS/FSR address those higher outputs.
Literally the only reason I can maintain 4k120fps is through DLSS (upscaler and/or frame gen). It’s glorious and there’s amazing tech behind it, I really don’t get the ”hate” against upscalers…. It’s fucking dope
The game can definitely chug if you get a ton of enemies on the screen
DLSS is a game changer in performance at 1440p and above. Whatever they have implemented is god awful. My screen looks super smeared in vaseline sometimes. Performance seems fine after dialing back some settings so i'm more ok with it this time around but i'd love DLSS implementation.
I took the frame hit at 1440P and ran it at native. I get 80-90 instead of upscaling but i couldn't get my head around the way it looked with the upscaler on.
This. 700k people are already playing the game as is. More content please.
i'd like to see both. i'm only getting ~90 fps on low-medium settings, quality upscaler at 3440x1440p with a 3080 + 5800x3d the game runs fine but for a fast paced shooter i'm forced to compromise visual clarity for frame rate. it's not necessary but better upscalers are available on a good amount of demanding titles
Idk chief. I'm getting 60-70 fps on ultra with 4070 mobile. Granted, it's from a laptop, but I shouldn't get 60-70 fps though. I was expecting at least 80-90
DLSS is not only performance lift but very good at AA, why people are pretending this game runs perfectly everywhere and we shouldn’t have the options for up scalers is ludicrous
The decision here isn't more tech vs. content, but more people being able to play the game at an acceptable framerate or at all vs. content.
when the people unable to play are like 2% of the pop according to steam hardware survey. even smaller when you consider playstation players are playing fine, no its not a large consideration when compared to content additions.
Lack of DLSS is slowly becoming a deal breaker for me. I do 1440p on an RTX 2070, and DLSS is the difference between 45 fps vs. 75 fps, or 70 vs 120. My card is going on 5 years old and the tech makes it possible to enjoy new games with a playable framerate. Thought about picking up Helldivers 2 over the weekend. This news pushes me back into the "ehh wait and see" camp.
Lemme join you in that camp. Old RTX 2060s user here and im a little off about grabbing the game after reading all the performance issues in the comments, definitely have to wait for more time.
I agree, kinda wish the game had a third enemy type. How dope would it be if they discovered a resource rich dinosaur planet? I’m thinking dense foliage with lightning fast raptors, tanky and ferocious tyrannoids, threats lurking in the water, and flying mobs that force you to stay under cover.
The OG game has a third faction. It also has player tanks, mechs, bikes, and other madness. Give the devs some time to flesh HD2 out and I think you'll be happy
People saying performance heavy should look at their cpu, got a 3080 everything on Ultra and never got any dips in 90h of playing, also playing helldive since level 15 so u can say i’ve seen screen flooded of bugs and automatons shot and it’s definetly helping that i changed CPU last months. (7800x3D) Running on ultrawide 3440x1440
Really should include DLSS and other upscaling tech, the image quality leaves something to be desired currently
If you have an Nvidia card you can use the Nvidia control panel to activate their proprietary upscaling/sharpening and anti-aliasing and then disable the in-game options. I was able to get a much sharper image that way. It’s a little more aliased than native DLSS support would probably be, but it’s enough of an improvement that I can live with it. My biggest problem with performance honestly comes from the CPU bottleneck which is an issue no matter how much you optimize the graphics settings. Turning down draw distance seems to be the only thing that helps but the game still can get down into the 30s or lower for me when there’s lots of enemies on the field.
what a loads of bullshit. dlss gives u a better image quality compared to taa(especially combined with DLDSR) and ofc more frames to play in a higher refresh rate! he talks about it as if its alot of work for the devs to implement.
Something that people don’t seem to be mentioning about their performance is what difficulty they are on, which has a direct effect on how well the game runs due to smaller maps/less patrols and less reinforcements when on lower difficulties. 4090 and 5800x3d and on some maps at hell dive difficulty with settings maxed at 4K, I’ve dropped below 60. This is the only game I’ve played on my system that comes close to this performance. There definitely needs to be some work done regardless of how much fun it is.
Yeah for real. I always ask my squad mates if they have drops as well when playing high difficulty and theres a llt on the map. And it's always the same for everyone. So when I see someone claiming they get 120+ fps with the same specs as me, I always suspect they checked frames on ship or low difficulty.
Why not both? How hard can it be to add DLSS and FSR? And even if that is too hard just add FSR2. It should be trivial and that's the one that everyone can use. sure it's not AS good as DLSS but still miles better than the FSR1 that the yare using
another day, another "article" made for a tweet by this CEO. and like what is he even saying here? the game already uses FSR 1.0 and it's not hard to implement at least DLSS, Nvidia can do that for you. Darktide on the same old engine did it as well. also why in their prio meetings did they prio MTX over "more awesome content"? why not prio more content and tech over MTX?
The performance isn't too bad considering how the game looks. But they really could have added FSR and DLSS if they are not going to put in better graphical controlls for the lower end hardware. It is just sad because DLSS and FSR can be added to any game with at least mediocore results by applying some non adjusted, vanilla mods. But because of the anti cheat, this isn't possible. I know the team has other priorities right now but adding DLSS wouldn't be a huge ammount of work. Not if just some basic DLSS is implemented, like in almost any game that isn''t AAA. Because if you play at any resolution higher than 1080p, you need quite a modern rig. Currently at 3440x1440 with a 2080Ti and medium settings at around 40 to 50fps. Acceptable but the game lookslike dogshit in comparison to other games because the crappy upscaler in this configuration.
I hope they gain enough resources and finances to transition to a more modern and up-to-date engine in the near future.
This is a really dumb comment to make considering the game already has an upscaling system in place (it's just shit). If there was DLSS you could get higher FPS, but instead we don't.
What about the anti cheat? At launch I heard it was too invasive, now I dont hear anything
Because most people either don't care or moved on to other things.
It’s still there. But I guess nobody gives a fuck. I will buy it eventually IF they get rid off their anti cheat and add FSR 2.
Can someone explain what DLSS is and why it affects a game?
It's an image upscaling technology that is used to boost performance without having a big visual downgrade.
DLSS is an upscaler technology. It essentially allows a game to render at a lower resolution, and then it is upscaled to the appropriate resolution making it look fairly close to the display's native resolution. It's a really awesome technology and absolutely necessary for people running games at 1440p and 4K (especially 4k) depending on the GPU in use. Helldivers 2 uses what seems to be FSR 1.0 or 2.0 (older upscaler tech). Regardless, it is HORRIBLE on anything below Ultra Quality. The image is very blurry. This is not an issue for me personally as I can run the game on Native, but I've been in the shoes of someone needing DLSS to have a good experience. The CEO's perspective here is a bad take imo.
I mean, sure, but I don't think the graphics programmers / engineers are the same people who are building content so I don't know why this would be a necessary tradeoff/choice.
The game doesn’t have graphics issues , imo focusing on content and stability should be more important then graphics tech